Official: Dempsey Apartments’ use unlikely to change

Once Macon’s proudest hotel, Dempsey Apartments has become a downtown home for senior citizens, the disabled and others who get government housing support.

Residents obviously aren’t homeless, but many of them tend to congregate outside. Politicians and business leaders have often talked of moving the Dempsey’s residents somewhere else and turning the building back into a hotel or regular apartments to help improve downtown’s image.

But that’s extremely unlikely, according to John Hiscox, executive director of the Macon Housing Authority.

Hiscox, who routinely deals with the federal government on housing grants and programs, said the Dempsey’s ownership made a deal with the government the last time they refinanced. He says the owners signed a 20-year agreement to use the building as “deep-subsidy housing” for low-income, elderly people, and that any future owners would be bound by the same agreement.